At Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, John A. Quelch has a post titled "Long-Tail Economics? Give Me Blockbusters!" Quelch is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Quelch explains the benefits and lures of blockbusters and offers five characteristics that define a blockbuster. His bottom line is this:

More risky than pursuing blockbusters is not to pursue them, to condemn your enterprise to a lifetime of slave labor harvesting the long tail of micro-opportunities rather than imagining, pursuing, and marketing the global solution to an important, widely shared problem.

The fourth characteristic, sustainability, is the one that stands out in entertainment. "A blockbuster brand is not a one hit wonder," Quelch wrote. "It is a gift that keeps on giving. Remember Intel's Pentium chip. Or look at the seven Harry Potter books and five companion movies."

In music, a hit can have a very long life due to greater demand over the years than if the album was not a hit. A hit translates into greater sales in other avenues as well.

This post follows the proper research and Harvard Business Review article by Harvard Business School's Anita Elberse that dismissed the demise of hits at the expense of more popular niches. The research sparked much conversation, and even Chris Anderson (author of "The Long Tail") weighed in. Additional reading can be found in an October 2006 Working Knowledge article about research by Elberse and a colleague that focused on video sales. "Even if the long tail accounts for a significant share of sales," said Elberse at the time, "it's not clear whether any single producer or distributor can do much to take advantage of that phenomenon."